March 31, 2012

He writes: "Thanks for the link, but, seriously, I know there are better things to do in Wisconsin than to be this publicly dim."

Typical lefty response, to call your opponent stupid. But:

1. Hello? Pierce? You're writing a blog. Bloggers write their own post titles. You can call yourself a "writer" and call your post title a "headline," but I presume if I'm looking at a real blogger, you write your own post title. But whether you write it or some unnamed person at Esquire does, you are responsible for it. And the words were not only ignorant; they resonated with anti-Italian material throughout your post. Or would you prefer to call it an "essay"?

2. Your post really was dumb. You insulted Justice Scalia when you did not understand what he was talking about. I pointed that out. You scribble — presumably doing your own writing — about tweaks to the ACA in the wake of criticism of the "Cornhusker kickback," in some desperate attempt to recover some dignity, but you still haven't shown any sign that you understand the purpose of Scalia's hypothetical.

3. You repeat your accusation that Scalia is "just not trying very hard anymore." But Pierce, you lazy, lazy man. You are not trying at all.

4. But I am an idiot. An idiot to send this loser any more traffic. But I just had to kick his flabby old ass one more time.

A seated Pierce reads this and hunches forward to compose a retort. He shifts so far forward that butt cleavage presents (though there's no one there to see it). He shifts to just his left cheek, balancing there out of comfort. Finished, he plops back, his squishy quiver emptied and lets fly his arrow through the ether!

I really get the sense that last week's SCOTUS arguments gave lefties a dose of cognitive dissonance that's taking them a long time to rationalize away. In the meantime, all they have to fall back on is invective.

Pierce is typical, in being a lightly educated person who's made his way through life by turning phrases of leftist cant into articles in such venerable publications as the Boston Phoenix. As long as he stays inside the cocoon, people tell him he's a talented writer, and in turn he tells them that he and they are smart.

These total beatdowns from Althouse are something he doesn't know how to respond to, because he's used to "winning" through intimidation. When that doesn't work, he's got nothing else in the arsenal--least of all informed, rational argument.

The tiny bits he contributes to the Boston Globe on sports are equally lacking in insight, btw. He's an embarrassment to Red Sox fans.

Sportswriters and Movie critics are notorious for being political dumbshits. I don't know why. Maybe they overcompensate with the left-wing crap because they're in the journalistic "Toy Department". Or maybe its because writing about sport or movies 24/7 rots their brains. Or maybe they believe politics is like the movies or sports.

It is pretty clear that Pierce cannot go one on one with either Althouse or even the majority of the commentors over here. He is one of those wimpy little writers who needs a small audience of acolytes in order to feel useful. He overrates his ability to offer a Churchill like or Samuel Johnson like barb.

It's so much easier to call someone dim than prove they're dim. You can't do the latter while being dim yourself. Plus, calling someone dim is the lazy man's way out. Prove them to be dim, if you can. Of course, some dimness is self-evident.

I was astonished at the uniformity of opinion in the comments over there. I picture them all in their tight pants, Beatle boots, Ray-bans and $60 cropped haircuts sipping Pabst Blue Ribbon and celebrating their own wicked wits. Then I picture them again in forty years, no families, tattoos fading and sagging, living on ramen noodles in one room flats, because the Democrats bankrupted the country at their behest.

Good to know that civility is fucking bullshit, because I'd get hopelessly stuck in the nuanced weeds of calling people names and calling people stupid and calling operas watermelons, and wondering who's getting the most mileage out of "Tony." Sammy Alito just sounds wrong on its face, though doesn't it? You'd never know that he's a Tony too. And so is Justice Kennedy! Wow, cue the creepy music....

Quaestor said...garage mahal wrote:Scalia's "misunderstanding of the hypothetical", just happens to be the explanation that doesn't make Scalia look like a fool.

Scalia isn't the one misunderstanding the hypothetical.

Fool.

3/31/12 6:13 PM

To paraphrase Abba Eban's observation about the Palestinians, Garage never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to prove himself a fool.

Pierce is like Kagan, educated in the bubble and living in the bubble they have no concept that anything exists outside the bubble. However Kagan does have native intelligence and her wow expression is that of someone who for the first time has seen something completely outside her frame of reference. She may yet become a real jurist. I predict (for whatever that is worth) 7-2 to overturn.

"If you think she turns words to her advantage, just review this post and the comments. Her words were her worst enemy."

This is an interesting way of arguing. It assumes a position against the person, then uses the perception based on that position to make an argument against the person. This is an entirely self-contained argument that can be deployed in any context, regardless of topic or person.

Essentially, this comment and over at the Esquire blog there, its not about using words at all, at least as they convey meaning or context. It's an attempt at domination, words as tools rather than words as communication, using your own self-conceived authority to indicate a supposedly self-evident failure by Althouse's observations.

Assumption of one's own superiority is the whole ground of this approach, which oddly enough assumes that others are convinced by such declarations of assumed superiority.

The ad-hominem deployed against her thus becomes, in and of itself, the proof of Althouse's logical deficiency. She was said to be stupid, so whatever she says must then be proof of that.

It's an interesting intellectualized approach, because at essence it really isn't even about trying to convince Althouse that she is wrong.

It is an attempt to negate her as a contributor to the conversation, negating her comments as simplistic while at the same time elevating one's own perception--all while basically just calling people names, which is among the most childish forms of argumentation. It's a rhetoric of violence thinly disguised as objective reasoning.

Or, using slang from the 20s, "Says you!" The "you" implying an inherent lack of contributory insight that would bear any substantive meaning for the conversation and as such can be summarily dismissed.

Another species, it seems, of the "You, a law professor!" retort.

It's interesting because, as I said, it's not about the argument at all but about protecting one's own ego and self-assumed sense of superiority.

Very postmodern in a way, as it uses language in a game rather than to exchange meaning, though at the same time entirely not postmodern as it assumes a definitive metanarrative as providing some objective mark of defeat or failure.

So Althouse wants an internet link for ass. No doubt suspecting this was sarcasm, Andy declined. But I take up the challenge!

I photo googled "old flabby ass," and you might be surprised but there don't appear to be a lot of old flabby asses on the internet. I think that's some sort of supply-demand issue. But I suck at economics so I can't be sure. I did find one old flabby ass and I clicked on it, and damn if it didn't take me to the macho response!

As to whether that is indeed Kathy Griffin's ass, I offer no opinion. You're going to have google that for yourself.

A mastery of language isn't just about using words, it's also about understanding how words are used and deciphering the essence meaning from words. Boiling down an argument. Precisely why reading comprehension is such a big part of the LSAT and law studies. You have to get to the heart of the matter without being distracted by what may be complicated sentences or obscure word usage.

That's what the best academics, ministers, lawyers, etc. do.

That's why Althouse's 4th point here is so important. It is the very essence of the present exchange, first with Pierce against Scalia, then against Althouse. It's just insults and posturing from the very beginning, so Althouse makes it all explicit.

And I don't at all think Pierce or others are stupid. It's very intelligent to use language as a form of rhetorical violence when one's own position does not seem to be finding favor through the use of language as an exchange of ideas.

This is the claim made by Mr. Pierce that piqued my interest. In the realm of “old media” print publications, the claim is entirely true, although a great many people don’t know it. The writers who write pieces for newspapers and magazines virtually never write the headline. Mr. Pierce can write an article for publication in Esquire’s print edition, but he would not write the title that would appear over it. The privilege of headline-writing is, in these organizations, generally reserved for a select few, or even just one, senior staff member, editor, or publisher.

For a blog, on the other hand, even one hosted by an “old media” print publication, I would assume, as Althouse did, that the blogger who wrote the post also wrote the title of the post. It doesn’t seem practical to me that you could centralize the headline-writing function for a blog in the same manner as is done for a print publication. Or do they actually have a system for doing it?

That’s why I’m asking the question. Mr. Pierce certainly denied authorship of the title of the post. He did so, obviously, as a means of deflecting Althouse’s criticism. Notice that he does not offer a positive defense of the title, but merely attempts to shift responsibility for it away from himself and onto some other, unknown party. Would Mr. Pierce flat-out lie about something like that in order to escape criticism? I would be very reluctant to leap to that assumption. Is he, perhaps, leading his readers to conflate the inner operations of the blog with the inner operations of the print publication, again, as a means of deflecting criticism? Just what sort of a system do they have at Esquire?

SCALIA: When we strike that down, it's clear that Congress would not have passed it without that. It was the means of getting the last necessary vote in the Senate. And you are telling us that the whole statute would fall because the Cornhusker kickback is bad. That can't be right.

Doesn't this suggest a magnificent opportunity for bipartisan legislation that satisfies conservatives? Draw up a two part bill that says the kind of government programs the Right wants will be funded by the sorts of taxes we have now - rates reduced, since the Right wants smaller government - and the programs the Left wants will all exist and be funded by declaring the Koch brothers, Rush, and other named villains to be guilty of crimes against the state and fining them huge amounts of money. Pass it by universal accord, have the courts strike the bill of attainder half, and govern like it's 1925.

At last, you got something right. In the space of three years, she clerked for a judge and worked as a drone in a huge litigation firm. And that was almost 30 years ago. Such is the "experience" of this coddled academic who "trains" practicing lawyers.

Find yourself a more worthy heroine, edutcher. The ole Althorse she ain't what she claims to be, ain't what she claims to be, ain't what she claims to be ... (sing along if you like)

Actually, she's a Hell of a lot better than that and, apparently, you can't handle your jealousy.

She spent most of this week putting the hearings for one of the most momentous pieces of legislation in our time into words and ideas the laymen here can understand.

And, yes, a law professor trains lawyers.

Can't handle it? Sorry, that's what she does. And she did work in a high-profle litigation firm before accepting a position at UWM, so perhaps Peano is jealous of her professional success.

Maybe Peano is mad because, as a "coddled academic", she should be beating the Administration's drum and saying how brilliantly the law was written and how dull the Justices were not to see the brilliance of the SG's arguments.

Maybe Peano is one of Troop's old crowd, nursing a bruised ego because of Bloody Sunday (Hell, I was deleted, too, but I'm mature enough to get over it).

Anybody who talks the way he does has personal issues he needs to address.

You know it has struck me as ironic that the complaining was all about freedom of speech and fairness and not playing favorites and whatnot then to discover they secluded themselves behind an iron blogspot curtain.

I checked, and it turns out that this is one of the richest, fullest, most abundant, bounteous, bursting, crammed, jam-packed, full, laden, loaded, padded, plenteous, stuffed, teeming, and voluminous of all subjects. Imagine what extraterrestrials must think of us.

I was, frankly, expecting more fireworks in this thread and the thread over there.

All we have here is Garage putting up his usual solid but unspectacular effort and then that anti-religious bigot Andy spouting at his typically intellectually inferior level. I'm a little disheartened. We seemed to have a political dead end in this country, where people on either side are just sniping at each other out of passing cocoons.

Oh well, at least one of my posts was referenced by the leftist tools on the Esquire thread. Naturally, the point and the joke went right over the poor guy's head.

Let's put it this way. Pierce must write his book reviews and his bio--I've not seen such knob polishing tripe since I last read Baron Von Munchausen. Pierece is in no position to instruct anybody about anything.

AllieOop said... PaddyO, there is a reason his blog is private. Don't make assumptionsSince you don't give the reason, we kinda have to make assumptions. Did he go from posting 60's cheesecake to explicit amateur porn in his wife's dresses? Too bad, anyway, he's amusing and usually sensible.

Curious how many commenters at Esquire include a university affiliation--and that Esquire puts it up. Not sure if they work there or just giving their pedigree.

For over a year, I wrote most of the headlines for my college weekly paper, but I never wrote an article for it. I was in charge of paste-up (before computers took over), and headlines were often done at the frantic last minute after an all-nighter. There's an art to meeting the space and time constraints without being banal.

Amazing that even syndicated columnists don't write their own headlines (you'd think they'd demand it), but one size does not fit all newspaper layouts.

Good to know that civility is fucking bullshit, because I'd get hopelessly stuck in the nuanced weeds of calling people names and calling people stupid and calling operas watermelons, and wondering who's getting the most mileage out of "Tony."

99% of Catholic clergy serve faithfully and honestly, with rates of sexual malfeasance 6% to 7% below that of Protestant clergy (Phillip Jenkins, University of Pennsylvania). Jenkins also asserted in 2002 that his research indicated Catholic celibate clergy were no more likely to violate sexual ethics than Protestant non-celibate clergy.

Catholic abuse cases overwhelmingly involved adult men seducing pubescent young men. The problem was homosexuals seducing young men, not priests raping children. Both situations were unethical, but the situations were not the same.

I had no problem with the original post. But Anne loses the argument, as do all the name callers by forgetting the wise advice of Dilbert: "Never argue with an idiot. They bring you down to their level, then beat you with experience."

The use of vulgar language, however cathartic, loses points for credibility because it offers no useful feedback other than to convey you've lost control of the conversation through anger. The nastier the names or vulgar language, the more points you lose.

It offers to one's opponent the consolation that to some extent your original thoughts were just fluff and of no account and that in toto you were merely trying to express anger. This, of course, leads them to believe in their deluded minds that they have won a great battle, when they haven't.

I avoid lefty sites because their vocabulary is limited significantly by use of small, four letter words which do not mean what they think they mean. It is their loss as the people they want to persuade do not wish to be part of that kind of conversation.

It does not seem productive to me to drive the polite considerate people that share our sentiments away with such vituperation. To me, the messages I want to send are far too important to me than my right to express myself with uncouth language or name calling. That you felt the need to use that avenue is a big red flag that you are arguing with someone who is incapable of understanding the nuances, and who should have been left alone in the first place.

Do you enjoy the fight so much that you don't care about the end result? When the battle is over, we may lose by a hair. It would be a shame if that hair was our lack of civility in response to theirs.

In the meantime, I took with great pleasure Scalia's karmic comment on cruel and unusual punishment. He was able to add humor to the situation and reflect back to the defense the fact that congress didn't read the bill before passing it. Scalia rocks.

I hope the supremes take out Wickard vs Filburne while they're at it. That would make 2012 the best year in a long time for the constitution.

On blessing those who curse you, there is a story about Krishna. Two men, enemies, one right and one wrong in the issue at hand, battled it out and the right man won. Krishna appeared and said He would award the contestants immediately. To the right man he said, "Die immediately." To the wrong man, he said, "Live for a thousand years." Onlookers were horrified at Krishna's actions. He gave them reply. What do you think He said?

Clue: blessing is not sentimental, nor does the ordinary or even the extraordinary person know the conditions, causes and consequences of past, present or future.